Daphne's Jubilee Elementary Nears Completion as Rezoning Sends Some Students to New Schools
The K-6 school on Corte Road is scheduled to open in August, relieving crowding at Belforest Elementary. Its opening also redraws attendance lines across Daphne — changes that brought families out to public meetings last fall.
Jubilee Elementary — Photo: Baldwin Citizen
A sign reading Jubilee Elementary now stands along Corte Road in south Daphne, where Daphne's newest school is in the final weeks of construction. The K-6 school, at 9549 Corte Road, is scheduled to open when classes begin Aug. 12, according to Baldwin County Public Schools.
Jubilee Elementary — Photo: Baldwin Citizen
The building is meant to relieve Belforest Elementary, about three miles away, which has used portable classrooms since it opened in August 2020. District projections show Jubilee starting with about 680 students, with room to grow; the school system has put its capacity at 1,200 and its cost at about $35 million. Superintendent Eddie Tyler has called Baldwin County the seventh-fastest-growing county in the country, and school officials have pointed to hundreds of subdivisions under construction that could add roughly 17,000 students in the years ahead.
Crews are also building a roundabout nearby, at County Road 13 and Milton Jones Road; the intersection has been closed since early May, with traffic detouring onto Corte Road, and the work is expected to finish around the end of August — the school's first weeks.
Road-closure and detour signs mark the County Road 13 work near the new school. — Photo: Baldwin Citizen
Opening Jubilee also sets off a wider reshuffle. W.J. Carroll, long an intermediate school, becomes W.J. Carroll Middle School for grades 7-8, and Daphne Elementary expands to serve kindergarten through sixth grade. Under the new feeder pattern, students from Daphne Elementary and Jubilee will go on to W.J. Carroll Middle, while those from Belforest and Daphne East will attend Daphne Middle.
The new attendance lines drew the most attention. The district redrew zones across the Daphne area after a series of public meetings last fall, including one at the Daphne Middle School gym that drew more than 100 parents, students and staff. Much of the concern centered on the district's decision not to grandfather students into their current schools, meaning some children will change schools this fall regardless of where they attend now. Tyler acknowledged that many students would not start the year alongside their current classmates, but said grandfathering at the elementary level is not something the district does.
The state construction sign carries the original project name, Daphne South Elementary; the board later renamed the school Jubilee Elementary
The school board chose the name Jubilee unanimously, a nod to Daphne's nickname, the "Jubilee City." The term comes from a natural event along the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay, when shifting water conditions push fish, crabs and shrimp into the shallows for residents to gather by hand — something that happens regularly in only a few places in the world.
Dana Bottoms, the longtime principal of W.J. Carroll Intermediate School, has been named Jubilee's founding principal.
Families unsure where their children are zoned for the coming year can look up their assigned schools by address through the district's School Zone Locator at bcbe.org/schoolzones. If construction stays on schedule, Jubilee's first students walk in Aug. 12.